


Two Americans In England At Christmas

by Cloudbustings



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), It Chapter 2 (2019)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Other Losers mentioned but not physically present, a hint of angst, a second chance at love, eddie bev and bill be like: divorce gang, eddie is still dead though, richie is coping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:21:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22020979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloudbustings/pseuds/Cloudbustings
Summary: Originally when Richie envisioned Christmas this year, he pictured himself nursing a beer in front of the couch while eating a lonely Christmas dinner and watching romantic holiday specials just to make himself feel worse about the state of his romantic life. But perhaps it’s a good thing that Bill uprooted him from California to spend two weeks with him just enjoying the sights of England at Christmas time.Or alternatively:Bill has two weeks to seduce Richie before Christmas arrives and he doesn’t even know what he’ll do if he succeeds.
Relationships: Bill Denbrough/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35





	1. By Call or By Text, Reach Out to Me

From its perch on the bedside table, the IPhone screen emanated a ghostly white that broke through the darkness of the bedroom. Two text messages from six seconds ago. 

Bill Denbrough — _You awake?_

Bill Denbrough — _Richie?_

Outside the waves curled into the sand and retreated back out again, rolling away from the California coastline. The lull of the ocean and the breeze rolling inland could be heard inside the bedroom through the fly screen because the sliding glass door had been left open a crack. Under the covers, Richie slept soundly with no clothes on despite the whisper of cold air.

The phone began to vibrate on his white bedside table, making a loud noise as it shook against the table surface. Richie opened his eyes, blinking hard against the darkness. He spotted the shaking phone on the table and clumsily shot one long arm out of the covers to snatch the device off of the table. He aimed the bright screen away from his face and groaned softly as he unplugged the charger and tossed it to the floor. With a thumb he slid the accept button across the screen and pulled the covers higher up over his body to protect himself while he held the phone up to his ear and turned down the volume.

“Richie? Hello?” said a seemingly male voice through the phone. 

“Mmhullo…” murmured Richie, eyes closed.

“Oh, _shit_. Did I wake you up?” fretted Bill.

“Yeah...”

“Shit, sorry. What time is it for you?”

“It’s…” Richie trailed off and squinted at the clock on the top of his phone screen. “5:38 AM.”

“Oh geez. Sorry about that.” said Bill, and it was not too early for Richie to imagine that Bill was wearing a soft, sheepish smile. Richie smiled with his eyes still closed.

“What’d’you call for anyways?” 

“Oh! Yeah! Well, um, I've been thinking...and I wanted to invite you over to stay with me the week _before_ Christmas and the week _of_ Cuh-Christmas.” 

“What, like, Losers club Christmas at yours?” said Richie while he scratched at his temple.

“Umm...act-actually I was j—- _just_ inviting _you_.” stammered Bill. At this, Richie’s eye shot open. He rose up out of his bed and swung his legs over the side, facing the wardrobe with the phone still pressed to his ear.

“Just me? Serious?” asked Richie. He chuckled a sleepy laugh. “Gosh, Billy-Boy, wont you quit? You’ll make a girl think she’s your favourite or something.” 

At this Bill laughed. “Nope. No favourites here. I just wanted to spend Christmas with a friend, not a whole friend group. It’s l-luh-lovely here in England during the Christmas time—they really go all out. I want you to see that.” said Bill.

They were silent for a few beats, but it was comfortable. Richie smiled to himself down at his naked knees and pulled the blanket over his uncovered crotch.

“Remember when you and I fought that werewolf in the house on Neibolt street? We got out just in the n-nick of time and you rode on the back of my bicycle.” said Bill quietly.

“I remember that. I wouldn’t say I _fought_ the werewolf, though. More like slapped it and ran for my life.” said Richie with a laugh.

“I still remember your small hands around my stomach, kinda...crushing me. I turned around and nearly had a coronary ‘cause I thought that you had died. You had a huge gash in your forehead and you were zonked out.”

Richie laughed into the palm of his hand and slid that palm upwards to rub at his forehead where the gash had been.

“I held you while you cried.”

“You started crying too.”

“You’ll have to forgive me. I hate seeing my friends cry.” 

There was a strange static feeling in Richie’s stomach. He wasn’t sure he appreciated just how oddly intimate this call had gotten, but he didn’t know how to back out.

“So you’ll come over for Christmas?” said Bill.

“Uh, yeah.” Richie sighed.

“Awesome!” Bill said happily. “I can’t wait.”

“Me neither. Bye, Bill.” said Richie.

“Richie?”

“Yes, Bill?”

“Bring swim trunks. I live near an indoor heated pool.”

Richie nodded in spite of the fact that Bill couldn’t see him through the phone. “Mhm.” He hummed. “Good bye.” And after Bill said his final goodbye he pressed the end call button. It was finally silent again except for the sound of the ocean. Richie slid his palms across his wide thighs and stared at his blurry reflection in the wide mirror-slash-wardrobe door. He let out a content sigh through his nose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, I don’t have a beta because no one talks to me :) if you would like to beta this, please dm me!
> 
> My social media handles are:  
> Twitter: hedgehog_babie  
> Tumblr: thatfreyja  
> Instagram: thatfreyja or freyjatheanxious


	2. LED Angel

Fatigued and frustrated, Richie thought to himself that the explosions of Christmas lights behind his eyes were _too much_ for someone fresh from an entire day of flying on two different planes. Richie slumped against the side of the car and pressed his cheek to the cold window. He could barely fend off sleep from dragging him deeply under. Bill, being the good situation reader he had always been, did not speak a word the entire trip to his house. Didn’t force a conversation that wasn’t necessary and couldn’t be kept at one in the morning. He did, however, gently shake Richie awake when they arrived at his house.

“Hmm…?” Richie slurred, blinking through dry eyes. “We there yet?” he mumbled and rose up slowly from where he had leaned against the window. Bill laughed with amusement into the palm of his hand. There was a sliver of drool trailing out of Richie’s mouth on one side which he wiped away with his fingers.

“Yep.” said Bill. He unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the car door to step out. The night air was cold enough to bite at his nose and fingers. He waited a moment for his friend until he stepped out of the car himself. When Richie entered the open-air he shivered at the cold and pulled his leather jacket tighter around himself, thinking to himself that he was glad Bill told him it would be exceptionally cold. Inside his suitcase he had a wool scarf ready to protect himself from the bitter chill. But that could wait for later.

Surprisingly, the house that Bill lives in isn’t large. It’s narrow, small, two stories high, and squished between the other homes that make up this side of the neighborhood. It’s one of the homes which have been redone in a more modern style within the last few years, but it’s still the same size as all the others. 

Bill walked around the front of the car and snuck up to Richie’s side so that he could wrap an arm around his neck and pull him in close. Richie glanced openly at him in surprise, earning a warm smile in return, and they walked up to the door together. The air inside his house was much warmer than outside, so Richie stopped shivering. When the weight of Bill’s arm left Richie’s shoulders he frowned deeply and watched his friend flip on all the lights and then pull open the door to a tiny closet where all coats hung and the shoes sat on a rack.

The two of them shrugged off their coats and Richie passed his to Bill for him to hang up while he wandered deeper into the house. Further inside he was met with a sliding glass door whose glass was sea green and dimpled until it was foggy, disguising everything inside besides the colours and vague, blurry outlines of furniture. At the end of the short hallway was another similar glass door which he slid open to find a tiny kitchen with two large windows on the opposite wall facing a garden. There was a fridge on the wall to his left, a table pressed up against the wall opposite to the windows, and a countertop underneath the window panes. Everything was modern, stylish, and clean. 

Richie’s one bedroom flat back in America is wildly different in size and style and yet it carries the same whispers of loneliness that are present here. It’s lived in, but it centres around the routine and needs of only one person. Someone who doesn’t seem to make much of a mark on his surroundings while he paces the length of the one room, more deeply grounded in the world inside of his head than the one outside of it.

When Bill decided to join Richie in the kitchen so that he could open up the fridge, his friend stood stiff as a board from the other side of the room and peaked inside the mostly empty refrigerator. This is what he saw: Edamame, a half eaten package of mini sausages, a litre of lemon soda on its last ounces, a few bottles of hefeweizen, eggnog, milk, mixed fruit juice, and a package of shrivelling blueberries on top of a larger package of what once must have container strawberries which stained the cloth at the base red with juice. 

After a second of surveying the contents of the fridge Bill did not find what he was looking for.

“Want a drink, Rich?” said Bill, looking over his shoulder at Richie as he asked him.

“Just some water. I’d like to just pass out right about now. Don’t wanna drink much.” Richie replied, even though he was thinking about the hefeweizen in the fridge. Enough is enough, and two glasses of white wine on both flights here combined some additional stolen swigs of duty free liquor is _definitely_ enough. In fact it’s enough to drag him out of the kitchen and into the living room where the pullout bed is already set up for his use. And he plans to use it—right after he slips into something more comfortable (and brushes the taste of alcohol out from behind every tooth inside his mouth).

Instead of owning a pajama set as though he’s some brand of forty-year-old _child_ , Richie repurposes soft thrift store oversized short sleeve shirts, and he reserves his rattiest sweatpants (the kind that are missing the drawstrings, so they slip down a lot and give an excellent view) for his nighttime attire. It seemed that Bill had the same idea, because when Richie caught him brushing his teeth in the only bathroom in the house (the upstairs one), he saw that his friend had on a black shirt that featured an astronaut mowing down the moon into a semicircle as though it had only been grass.

Toothbrush still in his mouth, Bill looked up at the mirror in front of him and met Richie’s gaze through his reflection. He looked over his shoulder, continuing to brush, and cocked an eyebrow. Richie only gave him a sly smile. His eyes were twinkling. When Bill spat out the foamy mixture of toothpaste and saliva that had been inside of his mouth, his cheeks prickled uncomfortably with warmth. The water he rinsed his mouth with from the tap helped to soothe the burn. Bill said goodnight to Richie by patting his shoulder without meeting his eyes. In doing so, he missed the way that Richie watched him walk down the hallway and disappear into the darkness of his bedroom.

That night found Richie wide awake despite being tucked snugly into the pullout bed. The house was quiet, and only the hum of the wind outside pushing against the sliding glass door in the other room could be heard. Richie turned over in bed and sighed into the pillow, closing his eyes and trying to sleep, or at least banish all thoughts about Bill’s greyish-blue eyes, feeling for all the world like a red marble in a sea of clear ones.


End file.
